A HEALTHY YOU: TRYING TO RELIVE LOST YOUTH RISKY

Weekend warriors may be risking their lives, if a French study is right.
That study suggests deadly heart attacks most often strike middle-aged men
on Saturday or Sunday. Part of the problem is sitting around all week and
then charging into sports on the weekend. Earlier I covered the Canadian
study of 113 middle-aged men who played ice hockey on weekends.

The men wore heart monitors on the ice. Heart rates shot up high and 15 men
showed signs of heart stress. So weekend warriors can tax their hearts.

And studies suggest that up to 15 percent of heart attacks occur during or
soon after hard exercise, typically in unfit men with high cholesterol. In
contrast, men who stay physically fit have a reduced risk of heart attack.

Just as ice hockey is a hazard for unfit men, other hazards exist for the
hearts of weekend warriors: recreational drugs like marijuana, cocaine and
alcohol.

Harvard researchers studied nearly 4,000 heart-attack survivors. Nearly 40
of them had smoked marijuana hours before their attack. The data showed that
the risk of heart attack rises five times higher than usual in the hour
after smoking pot.

Why? Marijuana can speed the heart 40 beats a minute. It also makes blood
pressure rise when you lie down and fall when you stand up. These changes
tax the heart.

In the same study, nine patients had used cocaine just before their attack.
The data showed that for an hour after using cocaine, your heart- attack
risk rises 24 times higher than normal!

Why? Because cocaine speeds the heart, boosts blood pressure and cuts blood
flow to the heart: a deadly combination.

Cocaine played a role in the fatal heart attack of a former professional
athlete this month. The medical examiner attributed the death to an enlarged
heart, cocaine and heat exposure that "stopped his heart."

Finally, a study suggests men who binge on beer strain their hearts. Some
1,600 men were tracked for eight years. Men who usually drank six or more
beers at a session were six times more apt to die of heart attack as men who
drank less beer.

Why? A beer binge can make the heart race and the blood more apt to clot. So
marijuana, cocaine and alcohol can tax the heart. Wise hearts need to know
the score on recreational drugs.

Dr. Eichner is a professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health
Sciences Center.